A hawk and a wristwatch

There are hawks, waiting on my school grounds; they sleep on roofs of dorms, twitching their wings and watching the teachers. They live on pigeons, mostly, on plump pigeon thighs like the rats underground. There is a quite strict set of criteria for being a pigeon, which I avoid as religiously as feasible, just in case. I’ve seen teachers lose fingers just for turning the wrong direction at the wrong time, head angled and small screwed-shut dark bird eyes, sharp nose like a beak. I found a pair of wings once, complete and held together by a tatter of red and bone, abandoned around the grass, a flight attendant’s gold-tone plastic lapel pin. I found a pair of hands, fingers soft like feathers, wholesale watches curled aroundon each wrist like bandages.
When you go south it’s not the hawks who watch you, it’s the homeless, and then turning away becomes the only solution to the problem. You squint at the clouds, at the one massive cloud that covers the entire skyhorizon, at the white rubber toes of your shoes on the cracking ground. You wouldn’t look them in the eye; they’re watching for weaknesses, like the hawks, seeing if you crack. The man had an unclean body and a pocket full of wholesale watches, fake and gold and glittery enough to draw in his magpies.
My mother’s birthday was three days ago, her words crackling through the phone line, a last-minute reminder dropped into my inbox like a pair of unexpected dead bird wings. I thought about getting her a pack of wholesale watches, one for every feeling; the gold-tone plastic like a half-remembered lapel pin for when she wants a distraction, cheap silver to leave her wrists colors, the round black watch face is a bird’s eye. If the hawk notices it and gets confused I might find her watches spread like feathers on the grass but she’ll be able to see the birthday card I made can’t find her before her fingers are abandoned, I made it flat. It’s impossible to open a folded card when the mail service is so slow.
I pray this note finds you surviving. I hope the hawk hasn’t found you first.